Hasta La Ideas

Frith Kerr and Studio Frith have designed an extraordinary book for an extraordinary artist – the avant-garde dancer and choreographer Michael Clark

As well as being one of the foremost dancers of his generation, Clark was renowned for his collaborations with the denizens of London’s post-punk scene. In his costumes (many of which were designed by Leigh Bowery) and staging, Clark has been consistently provocative and imaginative resulting in the wealth of spectacular imagery that populates this 348-page retrospective from Violette Editions.

Clark’s idiosyncratic way with punctutation and capitalisation in the titles of his work is referenced by Kerr in a series of title pages in fluoro yellow throughout the book while the type playfully alludes to dance.

A really stunning piece of work. Michael Clark is published in September by Violette Editions, £45

CR in Print

Don’t miss out – there’s nothing like CR in print. Our August Summer Reading issue contains our pick of some of our favourite writing on advertising, illustration and graphic design as well as a profile of Marion Deuchars plus pieces on the Vorticists, Total Design, LA Noire and much more

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine and get Monograph.

A comprehensive study of tribal art

American art historian Carl Schuster spent more than three decades traveling the world exploring tribal customs and patterns, gathering ancient tribal art and artifacts along the way. Though his goal was to illustrate the intrinsic human connection to artistic expression in an anthropological study, Shuster never managed to compile his research into a cohesive form. With the help of a fellow anthropologist, Edmund Carter, who transferred Schuster’s notes and musings, they were able to transform Shuster’s work into “Patterns that Connect: Social Symbolism in Ancient & Tribal Art“, a seminal book from 1996 that provides evidence and examples to support the scholar’s theories on our natural connection to art.

Comprehensive and comparative, the study contains a total of 1,023 illustrations, featuring sculpted figurines, garments, carved stones, paintings and body decorations from cultures and tribes around the world. Schuster labors to decode this complex iconography in notes and analyses that accompany the images, providing insight into the surprising unity of human society.

According to Schuster, tribal designs such as the ubiquitous zig-zag motif and artifacts such as “Y-posts” are really attempts to record family lineage, not meaningless doodles or objects meant for play. Of the continuous patterns generally used in ceremonial and even everyday garments Schuster remarks, “This is a graphic representation of the puzzle of procreation itself, in which there is neither beginning nor end.”

In contrast to the common anthropological idea that each culture is singularly unique, Schuster argues that since these designs did not just occur in isolated cultures, but were widespread across the earth at different time periods, they are proof of a collective human instinct. Schuster further pushes his theory by positing that ancient patterns continue to survive and are in fact relevant today. Stacked chevrons, for example, ubiquitous in several tribal cultures, are used as modern military insignia denoting rank. Another extension of this relevance appears in modern tattoos, textiles, fashion and art, which all seem to draw from frivolous and innocuous patterns that are actually saturated with hidden meaning through their connection to our tribal past.

A hefty tome in and of itself, Schuster & Carpenter’s “Patterns That Connect,” is intended for more than casual students of anthropological beauty (I discovered it in the library of New Mexico-based artist Judy Tuwaletstiwa). It’s out of print but a good copy can be found for around $100. Those even more serious about the discipline will want to check out the monumental work from which “Patterns” is derived, the 1986 “Materials for the Study of Social Symbolism in Ancient and Tribal Art,” which consists of twelve books in three volumes. Alibris is a good place to start your search.

Hangar Design Group’s newest book commemorates 30 years of design brilliance

Italy’s heralded multidisciplinary creative agency Hangar Design Group (HDG) recently announced the upcoming release of their book, “As I told you before, Ideas not Airships,” to celebrate 30 years of creativity. The lengthy book aims to reveal the intricate narrative between creatives and their unique design process through over 500 pages of inspiring imagery and thought provoking text.

Within seconds of getting our hands on this hefty coffee table book we were enamored with the brilliant graphics and modern mantras of design and creativity. The life of the studio is traced by taking the reader “on an unconventional figurative journey: suggestions, inspirations, memories, faces, places… belonging to anyone devoted to the process of shaping an idea into its full form.”

Leading from HDG’s first design sketches to the recent Sunset mobile home project—winner of 2011 Compasso d’Oro Award—this retrospective operates as a bound, over-sized mobile inspiration board delivering seemingly endless content.

Keep your eyes open come September to find a copy of “As I told you before, Ideas not Airships,” presumably available through the Hangar shop.

A look back at MoMA’s 1968 landmark show on our changing relationship to technology

At the time of the MoMA‘s 1968 seminal exhibition, “The Machine,” modern technology was at a point of critical transition between the mechanical age and the rise of electronic development. The Machine stands as the first exhibition entirely focused on and in recognition of the mechanical influence on the Western World. Through the artists central to the Futurist, Dada and Surrealist movements the exhibition illustrated the attitude of their time toward technology.

The metal book cover serves as a symbol of the mechanization of the modern world and makes it one of the more interesting book designs you’ll enjoy having on your library. The exhibition catalogue offers an in depth look at the 100+ included artists, chronologically ordered from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. The catalogue ventures from early mechanical depictions by Leonardo Da Vinci to the inventive diagram drawings of Suprematist Francis Picabia nearly four hundred years later. Each piece is accompanied by extensive black and white imagery and a collection of informative text and comments on technology by the artists themselves. From this the viewer learns of the Furtists’ aesthetic admiration of the machine and the Surrealist’s decisive opposition to machines as enemies of nature.

As the introduction poignantly states, “We take the machine’s usefulness for granted: yesterday’s new invention, no matter how amazing, quickly becomes the commonplace of today.” Some forty years later this noteworthy aside seems even more relevant today.

From Eadweard Muybridge’s historical photographic studies of motion to the groundbreaking sculptures and projection installations by Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman’s Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), the catalog details the revolutionary group who reshaped the new technology of their time with art’s individualism and freedom.

Seen by many as the last great exhibition of its period, The Machine continues to inspire. Look to Amazon or any number of other auction sites to snap up a vintage copy for yourself.

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but a daily sandwich makes for a surprisingly mesmerizing blog. The proof is in the Scanwiches. A project of graphic designer, photographer, writer, and foodie Jon Chonko, Scanwiches has been offering up “scans of sandwiches for education and delight” since 2009, when Chonko embarked on a mission to transform his “seemingly insatiable desire to eat sandwiches into what will likely become an essential tool, if not obsession, for sandwich connoisseurs the world over.” Colorful cross-sections of specimens ranging from the common (turkey club, homemade peanut butter and jelly) to the exotic (roast duck panini, the towering “Dagwood”) are listed by date consumed and labeled with their sources and ingredients. Be sure to save room for the book. This November, powerHouse will publish Scanwiches, a delicious collection of more than 100 of Chonko’s most eye-catching finds alongside text revealing the origins and development of each sandwich throughout history. “A supernova of swirling bread, cheese, meat, and lettuce, suspended in a black, vacuous space, and reproduced at actual size, each sandwich lays imposing, exposed, and tantalizing,” promises the publisher. Hungry yet? The book is now available for pre-order.

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